The Bomb Maker Read online

  “Just let me think about it, and we can talk tomorrow.”

  “There isn’t time. My car’s outside. You don’t have to do anything now but introduce yourself.”

  Two hours later Stahl sat on the desk outside the newly emptied Bomb Squad commander’s office. He was wearing the clothes he had put on to go to the No-Fail Security office this morning—a black sport jacket, a light blue oxford shirt, and a pair of gray slacks. The surviving members of the LAPD Bomb Squad wore work uniforms, essentially dark blue fatigues with badges printed on them. They sat on chairs taken from the conference room down the hall, or sat on desks, or stood.

  He said, “I’m Dick Stahl. Like you, I would have given a lot not to be here right now. We all lost friends yesterday. Some of you have lost teachers and supervisors, people who have saved you from dying or taught you how to save yourself. Like you, I want to get whoever did this to them. I’m sure we will. But right now, the highest priority has to be not losing anybody else.”

  Deputy Chief Ogden, commanding officer of the Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau, was visible to Stahl in the hallway. He gave Stahl a solemn nod, and then walked off down the hall.

  Stahl said, “From now on we will proceed the way we were taught at tech school. A team is three officers—two technicians and one supervisor. Every officer downrange will wear the suit. In most cases that will be one officer only. We’ll rely on the dogs to detect explosives, and use robots as much as we can to lift or disrupt them.”

  He looked at the ten men and four women in the room. “Beginning today, we will work under the assumption that we are not defusing anything, no matter how simple and straightforward a device looks. Everything that can’t be detonated in place goes into a containment vessel to be taken to a range and detonated there. I know you want to be able to render the device safe, trace the components to their sources, and convict the bug-eyed creep who assembled them. I’d love that. We just can’t be in that business right now. I don’t think it’s likely this bomber killed fourteen bomb technicians by accident. I think he devised the situation so he could. I don’t know why. But we can’t let it happen again. Questions?”

  A big man around forty years old with black hair and the hint of a tattoo peeking from his left shirt cuff raised his hand. As his shirt came down Stahl could see the design was a rattlesnake coiling up his arm.

  Stahl nodded. “Can you identify yourself for me, please?”

  “Sergeant Ed Carmody. I was going to ask you the same. You’re a friend of Deputy Chief Ogden, right?”

  “Yes. He asked me to help out for a while.” He shrugged. “I also have other friends on the force, and until yesterday I had more.”

  “Are you a bomb tech? Everybody here has been through the FBI course at the Redstone Arsenal and Eglin Air Force Base, and then recertified every three years.”

  “Yes. I was an army EOD man. I did tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, then worked out of Germany on a rapid deployment team for a while. Then I was the NCO in charge of the practical training range at Eglin for a couple of years. Then I came here and ran this squad. Some of the guys we lost yesterday are techs I selected and trained—Watkins, Del Castillo, Maynard, and Capiello.”

  A small, pretty woman with light skin and her dark hair pulled back in a tight bun said, “How long will you stay?”

  “I haven’t had time to figure that out. For now let’s just say I’ll try to help you through this, and then I’ll go away. About a half hour ago the chief swore me in. Here’s my badge.” He took it out and held it up in its identification wallet. “The day you’re back at full strength and running right I’ll give it back to him.”

  He took a folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket and consulted it. “Your team supervisors will be the same. If you were one, you still are. There are four teams consisting of three officers, and one team with only two. For now, I’ll join that one to fill in. We’ll call it Team One.” He looked at the sheet of paper. “With officers Elliot and Hines. Raise your hands.”

  He saw a couple of the techs look at each other and raise their hands—the small dark-haired woman who had spoken and the tall athletic-looking African American man in his early thirties beside her.

  The radios clipped to all fourteen of the uniforms spat and crackled, and the female dispatcher’s calm voice said, “Bomb technician team requested eleven thousand two hundred Moorpark Avenue in Studio City. Officer reports suspicious vehicle chained to the pumps at a gas station.”

  Stahl said, “My team will take this one. That will give the rest of you time to return to your stations and stand by for the next. Remember there’s a group or a person out there who seems to want us all dead. Don’t assume what you’re looking at is what it seems to be. Take care of each other.”

  Stahl walked quickly out of the squad room with Hines trying to get ahead of him. Elliot followed a few feet behind, on the radio. “This is Sergeant Elliot. Team One is responding,” he said. “ETA approximately fifteen minutes.”

  As he followed Sergeant Diane Hines outside to the parked truck, Stahl looked at the new LAPD headquarters building. It was all glass and knife-edge corners, many empty multilevel spaces and hallways with their own views of the Civic Center. The building had won awards, and it had a row of sculptures along its Spring Street side that looked to him like a line of hippos lying down beside a river. The array was interesting, but he knew they were there to keep somebody from driving a truck into the building—maybe somebody like the person who had wired up that house yesterday.

  He got in the bomb truck and moved to the back, so Elliot and Hines would take the two front seats. Hines claimed the driver’s seat and started the engine while Elliot climbed in. Then she flipped on the lights and siren and accelerated onto First Street. Hines drove with a cop’s aggression and speed, and won the game of chicken at each intersection.

  It had been a long time since Stahl had been in a speeding bomb truck, but it could never be long enough.

  6

  It was shortly before noon when Hines coasted off the freeway at the Laurel Canyon exit, covered the last couple of blocks, and then pulled up in front of the gas station. The pair of officers who had arrived at the scene first had strung yellow tape across one entrance and parked their patrol car across the other, and the young male officer was now guarding the scene while he spoke on a hand radio. He lowered the tape to let Hines drive the bomb truck in over it, and then secured it again.

  Hines stopped the truck in front of the small store at the edge of the station and she, Elliot, and Stahl jumped down. Elliot knelt to follow the chains from a pump to the car and then to the other pump, examining but not touching anything.

  “That’s it,” said the cop. “There are chains running from each axle and around both gas pumps, so the car stays put.”

  Stahl said to the cop, “Where’s your partner?”

  “She’s in the store with the owner.”

  Stahl said to Hines and Elliot, “I’ll go in and find out what I can.”

  He stepped into the small station. There was a counter with a cash register, and behind it a small room that looked like an office. A blond female officer was inside speaking with the owner.

  When the cop heard Stahl set off the chime as he came in the door she pivoted. “Sir, the station is closed right now. You’ll have to—”

  He held up the identification wallet with the captain’s badge. “I’m Stahl, the Bomb Squad commander.”

  “Yes, sir. I was just reviewing the surveillance tapes with Mr. Wertheim. He’s the owner.”

  “Very good. Do they show the car being driven here?”

  “The car was towed here about three a.m. The tape shows the car being towed behind a pickup. Then a man steps out of the truck, goes to the cameras, and smashes them, one by one, with a tire iron. He also broke into the store, but I don’t think he found anything he wanted. Mr. Wertheim says nothing’s missing. He doesn’t keep any cash here overnight.”

&n
bsp; “Okay, thank you, officer. Now, take Mr. Wertheim and your partner and put at least five hundred feet between you and the station. Take the surveillance equipment with you so the recordings are preserved. And please radio a request to stop traffic from coming into this intersection. We’ll wait for you to call us before we touch the car.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Stahl stepped outside and walked around the car and gas pumps at a distance of about six feet as he spoke into his handheld radio. “This is Bomb Squad Team One. We have a suspected car bomb at the gas station. Please clear the airspace above Laurel Canyon and Moorpark. And we’ll need at least a block on each side of us cleared of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. And please be prepared to evacuate the apartments and businesses on both streets.” He signed off and completed another circle of the car, stopping now and then to squat or kneel and look under the car or study the chain without touching it. “A Chevy Malibu, twenty thirteen. Let’s get a set of manuals for it on the laptop and get familiar with the parts breakdown, particularly the schematics for the electrical system.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Hines. She stepped to the bomb truck, opened the laptop, and began to search for the manuals.

  Stahl’s radio came to life. “This is Captain Holman at North Hollywood. You’re asking for a lot of space, Captain,” he said. “We’ll have three or four miles of gridlock.”

  Stahl said, “If the car is full of explosives, moving everyone a block away won’t be far enough. If it sets off the gasoline tanks under the station, four blocks won’t be far enough.” While he talked, he watched Hines and Elliot looking at the manuals on the computer screen.

  “Is that likely?” said the captain.

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I can. Until then, I think we need to be cautious.”

  “All right. You’ve got whatever time you need. Just keep us informed.”

  Stahl watched Hines and Elliot selecting the equipment for the preliminary examination. Hines carried a small mirror on a long handle, and Elliot had a closed-circuit TV inspection system, a cable scope with a camera lens and light at the end, and a box with a small color video screen for viewing the images. It was designed for plumbers inspecting pipes and other cramped, unreachable spaces.

  Stahl went to the corner of the station and looked east, west, north, and south on the streets. The cars had been diverted by police officers to other routes. When he returned to the truck Hines said, “Think we ought to cut the power to the pumps first?”

  He could tell she was feeling nervous and scared, but he judged it was the intelligent way to be right now. “Normally I would say yes, but this guy could be the one who booby-trapped the house yesterday. If so, he’s after us, and he knows cutting the power is something we’d do. The device could have a solenoid or a magnet that holds the switch in the OFF position until the power is cut. Examine the car first.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll take a look.”

  She extended the mirror and walked around the car, keeping her distance and looking underneath for thin trip wires or filaments, for any additions to the factory-installed parts that might complete an electrical circuit if touched. When she found none, she approached and looked into the interior from all sides, and then the backseat. She looked at her colleagues and shook her head.

  She extended the long-handled mirror and slid it under the car again, looking at the reflection for anything attached to the undercarriage, the wheels, axles, gas tank, engine.

  “Take all the time you need,” said Stahl. “I think this car isn’t here to blow up Mr. Wertheim or his customers. No timer, no cell phone, no fuzes. Looks like the bomber wants whatever sets it off to be something a Bomb Squad does.”

  “You really think so?” asked Elliot. “This setup doesn’t look professional.”

  “I have no proof,” said Stahl. “But my theory is that the wired-up house yesterday was done to attract as many bomb techs as possible and kill them. I can’t explain it any other way. The guy who called it in wasn’t who he said he was, and it’s hard to think of anything he could have gotten out of blowing the place up except killing cops. And one day later we get this.” He gestured toward the car. “I think this could be a trap set by the same guy, and he wants us to outsmart ourselves. Let’s take our time and not touch anything until we’re sure we’ve figured this out.”

  “Yes, sir.” Elliot took his closed-circuit television scope, moved the small camera at the end of the cable under the car, and studied the image on the screen. He moved the camera forward and back, then side to side so he could be sure he saw every square centimeter of the car’s underside. He sometimes raised the camera on the cable so it would be an inch or two from the underside, and sometimes he bent it at the end to look sideways along a depression.

  “Can you get a look at the wire bundles in the engine compartment?” Stahl said. “Look for ties that aren’t dirty. A smart car bomber will try to make his wires look like the car’s wiring, and maybe even use the same gauge and color wire. And be sure you trace anything that might be drawing power from the car battery.”

  “Right,” said Elliot.

  Hines said, “There are no bundles that look like they’ve been redone recently, and no boxes or packages that could hold explosives. Now I’m looking for parts that don’t look like they were there a week ago, and nuts that have scrapes where a wrench would have slid on them.”

  “Good,” said Stahl. “Keep thinking like that. And don’t move anything. This guy probably knows we’d rather not engage with his contraption. We’d rather tow it out of here and detonate it on a range. So I’m pretty sure he will have made it dangerous to try to move it away from the gas pumps.”

  “Hey!” said Diane Hines. “We’ve got a hole under the trunk.”

  “Let me get a look.” Stahl stepped close and took the mirror. He moved it around under the car. “I see,” he said. “The hole was cut with an electric hacksaw. It looks about five inches in diameter. There’s a space up and above that seems to be a tube of silver metal.”

  Hines said, “There’s no visible connection with the ignition system and no direct link to the battery.”

  “The connection could be to the light circuits in the trunk—brakes, backup, taillights, and the trunk light. That way we wouldn’t see new wires.”

  Stahl went to the bomb truck and got on the radio. “This is Captain Stahl of the Bomb Squad. I need to speak with Officer Engle, from the unit that arrived first at the Moorpark scene.”

  The dispatcher was on for a moment, calling unit Twelve Mike Seventeen.

  “Twelve Mike Seventeen, go ahead.”

  The voice was Engle’s, so Stahl said, “When you watched the security video, did you see the suspect approach the car in any way after he towed it in? Did he open the trunk or the hood or a door?”

  “Not that I saw,” Officer Engle said. “He drove a truck in with the car on a tow bar. No license plate on the truck. He got out of the truck, then broke the cameras on the outside of the building. You can’t see him well because there were no lights on. He looks about average height, average weight, wearing a hoodie over a baseball cap with no markings. After that there was nothing.”

  “Did you see him look into the car window or under the car or anything?”

  “The indoor camera footage showed he knelt down to unhook the two hooks from the undercarriage, got in, and drove away.”

  “How did the car get chained to the two gas pumps?” asked Stahl.

  There was a pause. “I don’t know, sir. The outside cameras were broken. I didn’t see it happen on the recordings from the cameras inside the building.”

  “Okay. Try to remember. Was there a point in the recording from the inside cameras of the building where there was a jump in the action, or a period of static where you couldn’t see anything?”

  “There was some of that—once when the car had just arrived, and then later too. But most of it was clear.”

  “All right,” said Stahl. �
�I think that may be what he wanted when he broke into the store and the office. He erased some of the recording. He may even have intended to erase it all. We need to have you see what’s missing. There may not be anything. But beside the gas station is an apartment building. Across the street from me there’s a strip mall with four businesses. There’s another business across the other street. If there are surveillance cameras in any of them, they may have something. We need to know if the man who brought the car did anything to it just before he left. Understand?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Stahl hung up.

  Elliot said, “What are you looking for?”

  “The guy towed the car in here,” said Stahl. “Maybe he set a timer or a switch after the car was in place. If one of the cameras caught him doing it, we’ll know where to look for it, and for the arming circuit.”

  “You think he put in a master-arm switch like in aircraft firing systems?”

  Stahl shrugged. “He towed the car here. He could have driven it here, or booby-trapped a car that was already here. What does that say to you?”

  “That the bomb is too big for him to make on the spot or carry here by himself.”

  “And maybe once it’s armed, it’s too sensitive to move,” Stahl said. “I think this guy wants us. He was hoping we’d drive up, see we probably had a car bomb, think we knew exactly how it worked, and guess wrong. Maybe we’d look at the chains to the pumps, just cut them and try to tow the car away, and set it off.”

  “Maybe we haven’t found the connection because it’s on a timer,” Hines said. “Maybe he wants us to stand here paralyzed until it blows. Or maybe he’s got his initiator connected to a cell phone or the remote control of a garage door motor.”

  Stahl said, “If he just wanted to set off a bomb on a gas station, he could have done it last night. Why build a trap unless you want to catch someone?”

  Hines said, “You’re saying the priority should be looking for whatever springs the trap?”